Implicit in J.S. Bandukwala’s avoidance of a prefix or suffix to the “Sabarmati Express train burning” ‘Glimmers in dark Gujarat’, is his understandable reluctance to empathise with the 54 passengers burnt in Godhra. This betrays his exclusive concern for his co-religionists. Moreover, the “horrible post-Godhra killings” he refers to, are not as one-sided as he and many others would like to project. According to the statement of the GOI, the community-wise break-up of the victims in Gujarat is as follows: 790 Muslims killed, 254 Hindus killed, 2,500 wounded and 223 gone missing. In a state with 88 per cent Hindus and 10 per cent Muslims, ruled by an allegedly pro-Hindu government, the casualty figures do not fit into the pattern of a genocide or pogrom of a particular community. Pan-Islamists and ‘secularists’ can’t see Hindu victims. Hence their fate is nobody’s concern. Certainly there were Muslim aggressors. Bandukwala and other like-minded groups remain reticent about the culpability of these forces. If (causing) the loss of a single life violates the law of the land and is inhumane, then the horrendous end of 54 lives in the railway compartment cannot be pushed under the carpet. More problematic is Bandukwala’s approach of calling upon Muslims to forgive the Hindus for their crimes. By focusing only on certain selected events of 2002, he arbitrarily excludes the entire range of “past mistakes”. In treating Muslims as a monolithic community and urging them to “consider unilateral forgiveness” (‘Forgive and Forget’, IE, November 3), so as to touch “the conscience of the Hindus”, and in wanting Hindu leaders to “express remorse”, he has opened another unexplored dimension of the socio-political transaction in Gujarat.In all fairness to the victims at large, one may have to spare a thought for the Hindus of Gujarat, once called the Gurjaradesa. Gurjaradesa was attacked several times by Islamic invaders, which included the repeated desecration/destruction of the holy temple of Somnath. The Islamic conquest of Gujarat began in 1298 and continued for 460 years, ending with the Maratha victory of 1758. Bandukwala finds contemporary Gujarat “totally divided along religious lines”. This observation could be true or false, but the simple method of deductive logic suggests something more. Would he accept that despite a sustained and merciless attack on every aspect of Hindu life, culture, honour and dignity, including forced conversion on a massive scale, the medieval society of Gujarat had never been divided along religious lines? Bandukwala should provide evidence to show whether any Muslim religious leader, military commander, invader, intellectual, had ever bothered to apologise to Gujarat’s Hindus and acknowledged the unspeakable atrocities inflicted on them over the centuries. Lastly, the spirit of tolerance and accommodation in medieval Arabia that he mentions is not convincing, since the pagans and their shrines are not to be found there any more. At the same time, contemporary Gujarat may still have the same generosity for the persecuted as it had once bestowed in abundance while providing a safe haven to the fleeing Zoroastrians from Persia.The writer is attached to the Department of History, Delhi University and is a former member of the ICSSR
